A Finer End

She thought she had never worked so well, with such richness of color or delicacy of detail, and for the first time in months the child had not appeared. But she was bone-weary, and when she’d put the final touches on the latest effort, she cleaned her brushes and left her studio.

Bram looked up from the book he was reading, his relief obvious. “Finished, darling?”

Fiona stretched out on the sofa beside him. “I’m knackered.”

“I wish I could help.” He stroked her forehead with his thumb.

“You do, just by understanding.” As a child, she had drawn on walls if no paper was available when the urge came on her—and had not understood when she’d been punished for it. At one point her baffled parents had tried to keep her from drawing altogether, and she had sunk into a state of depression so deep it bordered on catatonia.

“But I feel empty tonight,” she added, yawning and snuggling a little more firmly into his lap. “This may be it for now.”

“Are they good?”

“Brilliant. You’ll like them.” She smiled up at him. “I think I’ll go see Winnie tomorrow, if she feels up to a bit of company.”

“Shall I read to you?”

“What are you reading?”

“William of Malmsbury’s account of his visit to the Abbey in the 1120s. Listen to this. He’s talking about the Old Church. ‘… one can observe all over the floor stones, artfully interlaced in the forms of triangles or squares and sealed with lead; I do no harm to religion if I believe some sacred mystery is contained beneath them.…’ ”

Was that what Garnet had known? Fiona wondered sleepily, meaning to ask Bram, but the words began to stretch out like shining beads on a string, until they shimmered and faded away.

•  •  •

She woke on the sofa in a darkened room, with a blanket tucked round her and a cushion placed carefully under her head. It was late—or very early—she sensed that by the quality of the light filtering in through the blinds. She sat up, intending to go to bed for what was left of the night, and her dream came back to her in a rush.

The music—she had heard the singing again. Now it dissolved and slipped once more from her grasp.

And she had seen the Abbey, washed in a clear, pale light. But the heavily overgrown ruins had stood in an open, pastoral landscape, rather than their modern-day walled setting. A few thin cows grazed in the foreground, watched over by a man in old-fashioned dress who leaned picturesquely on a shepherd’s staff.

Fiona lay back and pulled the blanket up to her chin, trying to make sense of the disparate elements floating about in her head: the music, Garnet, the beautifully colored tiles in the Old Church, the odd view of the Abbey …

Her last thought, as she drifted off to sleep once more, was that the man with the shepherd’s crook had looked remarkably like Jack Montfort.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

But even St. Michael was helpless against the Powers of Darkness, concentrated by ritual, and in the earthquake of A.D. 1000 the body of the church [on the Tor] fell down, leaving only the tower standing. Thus was the Christian symbol of a cruciform church changed into the pagan symbol of an upstanding tower, and the Old Gods held their own.

—DION FORTUNE,

FROM GLASTONBURY: AVALON OF THE HEART

FAITH FELT VERY odd from the moment she woke on Tuesday morning. She wondered if any of the others sensed the heaviness, the oppression, in the air. She felt an urgency, as well, a sense that her time to take care of unfinished business was swiftly running out. And the baby, so violently active the past few days, was suddenly quiet, giving her only the occasional gentle nudge.

She felt her abdomen carefully, the way Garnet had taught her, but she couldn’t be sure that the baby had dropped. Why wasn’t Garnet here when she needed her? And how was she going to manage without her?

Fighting back tears of anger and frustration, she finished getting ready for work, then went looking for Duncan. She found him in the last bedroom, surrounded by opened boxes, his face already dirty and set in a scowl of discouragement.

Last night Nick had turned up at last, with a curt apology for his absence. He and Simon had joined in the attic search, carrying the smaller items down to Faith and Winnie in the sitting room. After a long evening’s work, they had all declared the attic thoroughly sorted, with a disheartening lack of results. Now Jack and Duncan had begun working their way through the remainder of the house.